Working on the Shutter plank on the first year project at IYRS. There’s a number of steps involved for putting on basically any plank on a boat. The shutter plank is the last plank on the boat.

The first step of the process is taking the spiling off the boat. The spiling is what you see in the third picture laying on the piece of cedar. The forward intersection with the stem is a perfect fit, all of the other aspects of the spiling are loose fitting. You take the rest of the measurements off of each frame with a compass.

The second step is to despile with the spiling and the compass, this means taking the marks off of the spiling and transfering them onto the piece of wood that is soon to become your plank.

The third step is to take the bevels off of the joining edges of the plank. This is why you see two lines when you look at the outline of the plank on the piece of cedar. This is done with a bevel gauge and is a little complicated to explain without having more pictures.

The next step is cutting out the plank. You cut the plank out leaving room for hand planing on the edges.

The following step is to plane down with a low angle block plane to the outermost line. Making sure as you go along that the edges are now square. After this is done you transfer the marks from the original plank onto the backside of your board. You then put the bevels onto the actual plank.

The final step after before steaming the plank is to back out the backside of the plank to match the curve of the boat. This is done with a backing out plane, the plane I use can be seen in my projects.

After all of these steps you steam the plank and as I’m sure a few of you know the general rule is for every inch of thickness there’s an hour of steaming necessary.

The wedges that you see taped to the boat are over bending wedges. These are put in place to “over bend” the plank to meet the bend of were the plank will eventually have its final resting place. Because this is the shutter plank, the only place for the plank to be clamped is on the plank above it. Any other plank would be clamped were its actually supposed to be. Once the plank has cooled, roughly 2 or 3 hrs (overnight is best) its ready to be taken off for its final fitting. This includes a lot of thin plane shavings, once fit, some final priming and fastening is in order and one final thing, as well as being the shutter plank theres also another name for this plank, the whiskey plank. Traditionally a shot of whiskey is enjoyed by all in the boat shop.

So to all of you aspiring boat builders and shipwrights out there, bottoms up.

This has been by far one of the most fulfilling and prideful moments of my life.

So my Mother and Father came to visit me at school this weekend and my Father surprised me with a Sam Collins axe!

I’m not sure how many of you know who Sam Collins is. Samuel W Collins was an Axe Manufacture whose company revolutionized the way Axes were made. In 1844 Collins hired Elisha Root to work in his Axe factory, in Collinsville, CT.

Before Root came to the Axe factory all of Collins Axe’s were made by flattening out a piece of wrought iron, bending the piece of Iron around a Steel pin and forging the two sides together with a trip hammer. Root came up with the idea of die forging, or applying high pressure to a mold and forming hot wrought iron into the shape of an Axe, an eye punched through it to receive the handle. After Root had come up with this idea he also came up with the idea of heat treating the edge of the Axe head while running it up against a roller to give the head a sharp edge. This made it possible for the blade to only need a little bit of sharpening.

Both of these processes dramatically increased the efficiency of making an axe head.

While I know the majority of people reading this are hearing it for the first time (or so has been my experience) I was taught about this in elementary school because I grew up in Collinsville, CT. So this axe which is actually a roofing axe is quite rare and special to me because it is so rare and because it was made not 200 ft away from my house.

Anyway, The handle had been replaced on the axe somewhere down the line and I decided that I wanted to put a more traditional and nice handle on the axe. The handle is made out of Oak.

You can see the Collins emblem, crown and hammer, and the word legitimus which is a latin word meaning; lawful, real, genuine, legitimate, just, and proper.

I have included a picture of the mill, or power source of the Axe factory in the pictures.

Here’s that backing out plane that you guys were asking to see. The body of the plane is beach, and hand rest as well as the wedge are teak.

This plane is very comfortable and does its job very well, the sole of the plane is convex making backing out planks much easier, although grinding down the lie-nielsen iron to a curve was kind of painful!

Since these pictures were taken Ive put a french polish on the plane, and once the finish was on it was almost too beautiful to use!

I just found a picture of the plane before the hand rest customization and threw that up there as well, and yes, the hand rest was an after thought, I think I chose the most difficult way of doing this!

I am currently attending The International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, RI. A couple of months ago we had to make a backing out plane, which (I’m sorry if an explanation isn’t needed) is a hand plane with a convex sole. This plane is made so that we can back out the planks of a boat and put a concave surface on the back of it so that it fits on the frames correctly.

During the process of making the plane, I found that I had a new passion for plane-making. I went a little overboard with the backing out plane and it is now the most customized plane out of the 19 new planes in the shop! The plane has a dovetailed handle on the back of it, unfortunately I don’t have a picture of it.

The pictures you’re seeing now are pictures of a plane that I made for my Grandfather as a Christmas present. Woodworking runs in the family and I thought this would make a great gift for him. The body of the plane is Marble wood, some hard stuff, they beat my Lie-Nielsen Chisels up! The handle, Nob, and wedge are made of a wood that I had never heard of before deciding to put it in the plane, Quina. I encountered a lot of tear out with the Quina. The plane cuts well, having an eighth inch slot, and a Lie-Nielsen blade. I wanted an antique English blade but did not have the time to go searching for one.

The plane took me about 25 hours to make and I loved every second of it! My Granpa’s face lit up when he saw it which made all of the hard work more than worth it.

This only being the 3rd hand plane that I have made, I’d love as much feedback and suggestions as I can get!